Diversity Beyond Demographics: Environmental Worldviews of Forestry and Natural Resource Undergraduate Students

In U.S. academic institutions, efforts often concentrate on enhancing the recruitment of students from underrepresented groups, focusing on gender and/or race. Yet, non-demographic forms of diversity have received little attention, such as environmental worldviews, i.e., differences in the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical beliefs that define how humans view, value, and interact with the natural world. Here, we develop an exploratory measure of environmental worldview diversity among undergraduate students enrolled in natural resource related programs. We tested our procedure at Oregon State University, a large public land-grant university in the US. Many students reported metaphysical, epistemological, and/or ethical beliefs that deviate from what has been philosophically characterized as the dominant western worldview of natural resources (anthropocentric, dualistic, hierarchical, utilitarian, mechanistic). Our results suggest that, although forestry students’ environmental worldviews are in some ways more closely aligned with the dominant western worldview than other students in natural resources, generally their worldviews reflect long-term generational shifts away from a strict resource-commodity value orientation, as documented in past research. Our findings highlight the importance of considering environmental worldviews as a dimension of diversity within the new generation natural resource students. Future efforts toward understanding these levels of difference can be important assets in designing programs which appeal to wide variety of students; ultimately helping efforts to recruit and retain a diverse of aspiring natural resource professionals.

Bioethics: Care of the elderly with Parkinson

Over time, older adults become more vulnerable and undergo physical and mental changes that make them much more fragile. Diseases such as arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, eating imbalances, heart ailments, hearing, visual and nervous system problems appear that affect their quality of life, as well as their family environment. In this context, for doctors and the family, the task of caring for a patient with Parkinson's is not easy, it implies medication, as well as the need to involve values, principles and ethical beliefs when caring for them. In this sense, it is necessary to reflect on professional and non-professional care in patients with Parkinson's in a care that must be based on respect, tolerance, patience and solidarity. Therefore, it is bioethics that promotes these attitudes of compassion and empathy towards older adults in the medical and family spheres with the aim that they can live this stage of their life with greater optimism and hope.

Personality Traits and Ethical Belief as Factors Influencing Fraud Intent Behaviour among Bank Employees in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Fraud is an ever-growing problem for financial institutions in Nigeria, with criminals using a wide variety of methods. Unfortunately, employees were fingered in most of these fraudulent activities. Previous studies focused on contextual and organizational antecedents of motivating engagement in fraudulent practices and less on employees’ dispositional factors. This study examined the role of personality traits and ethical beliefs on fraudulent behaviour among bank employees. The study was a cross-sectional study. Three hundred and fifty-three (353) employees in the middle to junior level management cadre were selected through stratified sampling technique from banking organisations operating in the Ibadan metropolis. The respondents responded to a self-report questionnaire measuring fraudulent behaviour intention and red flags; personality traits and Ethical position questionnaire. Two hypotheses were tested using multiple regression, Pearson correlation analysis and ANOVA at p≤0.05. Results demonstrated that conscientiousness personality trait was the only predictor of fraud intent behaviour among the personality variables. Employees with Absolutist ethical principles reported lower fraud intent behaviour than those with subjectivist ethical philosophy. The study concludes that personality traits and ethical beliefs were powerful motivators for fraud behavior. Thus, fraud and HR experts were enjoined to utilize psychological profiles in fraud investigations and selection of employees.

Overwhelmed by a Cloak of Darkness

This chapter applies both dark karma and cosmic intraspace to several of Ditko’s pre-Comics Code horror and weird suspense stories produced for Charlton Comics in 1953. The readings and contextualization provided in this chapter demonstrate that many of the ethical and moral concerns that appear in Ditko’s later, supposedly Objectivist comics, actually appear long before he became acquainted with Rand’s work. Rather, as this chapter argues, Ditko folded Objectivism into his pre-existing moral and ethical beliefs, which had a distinctly mystical flavor.

Vegan YouTubers Performing Ethical Beliefs

In Great Britain, “religion or belief” is one of nine “protected characteristics” under the Equality Act 2010, which protects citizens from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society. This paper begins with a discussion about a 2020 ruling, “Jordi Casamitjana vs. LACS”, which concluded that ethical vegans are entitled to similar legal protections in British workplaces as those who hold philosophical religious beliefs. While not all vegans hold a philosophical belief to the same extent as Casamitjana, the ruling is significant and will be of interest to scholars investigating non-religious ethical beliefs. To explore this, we have analysed a sample of YouTube videos on the theme of “my vegan story”, showing how vloggers circulate narratives about ethical veganism and the process of their conversion to vegan beliefs and practices. The story format can be understood as what Abby Day has described as a performative “belief narrative”, offering a greater opportunity to understand research participants’ beliefs and related identities than, for example, findings from a closed-question survey. We suggest that through performative acts, YouTubers create “ethical beliefs” through the social, mediatised, transformative, performative and relational practice of their digital content. In doing so, we incorporate a digital perspective to enrich academic discussions of non-religious beliefs.

Edirorial

Welcome to all readers of the BJB Vol 9 issue 3, 2018! The BJB team together with authors, reviewers and well- wishers have contributed their all-out support to bring out this issue despite many challenges. This issue spans several topics of Bioethics beginning from complementary feeding patterns, ethical beliefs and vaccine, the regulatory documents related to pharmaceutical promotion in Bangladesh and Intimate Partner Violence. All these topics are very important for Bangladesh as well other countries.

A goal-systems perspective on plant-based eating: keys to successful adherence in university students

Objective:To explore adherence to a plant-based diet from the perspective of goals- and motivations-based systems.Design:A cross-sectional, survey-based study was conducted regarding eating patterns, goals and motivations for current eating habits.Setting:Data were collected using an online survey platform, including the Goal Systems Assessment Battery (GSAB) and other survey tools.Participants:University students were recruited, including thirty-three students reporting successful maintenance of a plant-based diet (Adherents) and sixty-three students trying to adhere to a plant-based diet (Non-adherents).Results:Using GSAB subscale scores, discriminant function analyses significantly differentiated adherents v. non-adherents, accounting for 49·0 % of between-group variance (χ2 (13) = 42·03, P < 0·000). It correctly classified 72·7 % of adherents and 88·9 % of non-adherents. Constructs including value, self-efficacy, planning/stimulus control and positive affect were significant and included in the discriminant function. Logistic regression results suggested that participants who successfully adhered to a plant-based diet were seventeen times more likely to report ‘To manage or treat a medical condition’ as motivation and almost seven times more likely to report ‘To align with my ethical beliefs’ as motivation compared with non-adherents. However, these participants were 94 % less likely to report ‘To maintain and/or improve my health’ as motivation compared with non-adherents. Controlling for motivations, hierarchical logistic regression showed that only planning as part of the GSAB self-regulatory system predicted adherence to a plant-based diet.Conclusions:Values-based approaches to plant-based diets, including consideration for ethical beliefs, self-efficacy and proper planning, may be key for successful maintenance of this diet long-term.